Technical Field
The disclosed embodiments relate in general to image processing technology and, more specifically, to systems and methods for recognizing and capturing paper documents on a tabletop using an overhead camera mounted on pan-tilt servos.
Description of the Related Art
Many content processing applications including, without limitation, content indexing and search systems, document repositories, and language translation systems rely on automated document detection and capture. On the other hand, conventional systems for automated document detection and capture such as the CamWorks described, for example, in Newman, W., Dance, C., Taylor, A., Taylor, S., Taylor, M., Aldhous, T. (1999) CamWorks: a video-based tool for efficient capture from paper source documents. Proc. Intl. Conf. on Multimedia Computing and Systems (ICMCS '99), pp 647-653 and FACT described, for example, in Liao, C., Tang, H., Liu, Q., Chiu, P., Chen, F. FACT: fine-grained cross-media interaction with documents via a portable hybrid paper-laptop interface. Proc. of ACM Multimedia '10, pp. 361-370, used video cameras with insufficiently low resolutions (640×480 and 960×720, respectively), enabling capture of only small portions of the document page (e.g. a user-selected word or phrase).
However, even with sufficient resolution offered by the modern cameras, the image quality may suffer from noise and geometric distortion. Moreover, the existing systems fail to address realistic usage scenarios, wherein the document pages must be detected on the tabletop that is cluttered with other objects (e.g. coffee mugs, pens, etc.).
Thus, as would be appreciated by those of skill in the art, in view of the aforesaid deficiencies of the conventional technology, new and improved systems and methods are needed to improve the image recognition and reconstruction.